The exemplary and non-limiting embodiments of the invention relate generally to wireless communication systems. Embodiments of the invention relate especially to apparatuses, methods, and computer program products in communication networks.
In radio communication networks, such as the Long Term Evolution (LTE) or the LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), network planning comprises the use of common base stations (Node B, NB). User equipment (UE) may communicate with another UE via the base station(s), for example. Alternatively, it is proposed that the UEs may communicate directly with each other by applying resources dedicated by the network for a device-to-device (D2D) direct communication. The D2D communication has proven to be network efficient by offloading the traffic processed in the base station(s), for example.
Also other applications for group based communications have been proposed. For example, in co-operative relaying UEs may utilise D2D and relay traffic from other UEs to a base station.
Reserving resources for group based communication is under study. In some proposals, an access point such as a base station may control group based communication by allocating resources for the communication utilising control signalling. The signaling should be fast and have a low overhead.